Southern Carmine Bee-eater

[Chris van Rooyen]

This is another image from my trip last year to the Okavango Delta in Botswana. This bird rested briefly on the river bank before taking off to slip into its nesting hole to feed its young.

Camera Model: Canon EOS-1D Mark III
Date/Time: 2008:10:27 09:12:10
Shutter speed: 1/2500 sec
Aperture: 7.1
Exposure mode: Tv
Exposure compensation: +1/3
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 800
Focal length: 500mm

[Marc Mol]

Love the puff of sand Chris. Well exposed, perhaps a bit more canvas on the left?
I enjoyed seeing them also last year in the Sth Luangwa- Zambia.

Cheers
Marc

[Daniel Cadieux]

I also like the sand "splash". Good pose, exposure, and colours. Wish for more room at left and maybe a bit above too.

[Krijn Trimbos]

Hi Chris,
Gorgeous shot. Love the sand cloud, the colours, prey item and headturn. Composition wise I am not sure about this one. I would be interested in seeing a bit on the left but am not sure that it would make a huge difference, maybe also a bit more on top??? Apart from that excellent!

[Doug Brown]

Love the mini dust cloud. A tough one to crop; I'm not sure I would do it any differently. I might remove the diagonal green bands on the left though. Like this one a lot!

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Oh Chris this is an awesome image with incredible timing and excellent detail, lighting, exposure and wonderful eye contact. Great that you were able to capture the dust particles as it left the tree. A real beauty !!! Congratulations.

[Chris van Rooyen]

Thanks guys. Yes the cropping did pose a problem, the posture did not allow for a conventional rectangular crop, in the end I decided on a square crop. Not sure it worked 100% but hopefully the image has enough other merits to pull it through so to speak:-)

[Krijn Trimbos]

I don't think the high quality and specialness of the picture was ever a point of discussion Chris at leas not to me! Concluding; it defenitly pull through all the way!

[Tony Whitehead]

Diagonal comp works well. Excellent sharpness and flying sand is a real bonus. Well done, Chris.

[Ramon M. Casares]

I am not crazy about the square format, but that´s just preety subjective, the rest (pose, light, action, moment, colors and sharpnes) are preety muh perfect! Congratulations!

[bill kominsky]

Hi Chris, I also think this image is gorgous, beautiful, stunning and superb, congrats.

Bill

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great timing, light and details. Another vote for a wider crop.

[Juan Aragonés]

Thanks guys. Yes the cropping did pose a problem, the posture did not allow for a conventional rectangular crop, in the end I decided on a square crop. Not sure it worked 100% but hopefully the image has enough other merits to pull it through so to speak:-)

Chris, I know what you mean about the composition. Somethimes we get images that are very difficult to compose, or to re-compose in PS, and in that cases all the value of the image has to rely in other aspects like sharpness, action, light quality, etc. This is one of those cases in which the composition is not the strongest point of the image but all the other aspects are OUTSTANDING and the result is, in my opinion, an OOUTSTANDING image.

Anyhow, if you have more room at the left, I think that you can try a different crop adding space in that direction. I would love to see the original in order to think about a different croping. Maybe you can tilt the horizon a litle bit and add more space at the left but I do not know how much space you have in that part of the original frame.
Very good job!